Crazy Help

[GregA]

Not to give offense but I do believe that the content of many SlickEdit Help topics could use revision. Perhaps in the real world, Help does come near to last. Want to argue the point? Not here. But perhaps if we have a thread that establishes essentially a list of items requiring attention, we'll be taking steps in the right direction. For myself, I will try to add to this thread each time that I encounter what I consider to be a wayward Help topic.

activate_window()             ...    there is no specific Help. What is given is for  p_window_id.
get_window_id()                ...    contrary to the suggestion, the function doesn't set anything, does it?

I'm happy to be redirected if a thread such as this one already exists.

[Dan]

These could both use some help.  This will be scheduled for 13.0.1.  If you need to refer to this in the future, mention 1-AF4JX.

You can use set/check p_window_id rather than using these funcitons.  Also you are right get_window_id() does not affect the current window id.

[Graeme]

Not to give offense but I do believe that the content of many SlickEdit Help topics could use revision. Perhaps in the real world, Help does come near to last. Want to argue the point? Not here. But perhaps if we have a thread that establishes essentially a list of items requiring attention, we'll be taking steps in the right direction. For myself, I will try to add to this thread each time that I encounter what I consider to be a wayward Help topic.

activate_window()             ...    there is no specific Help. What is given is for  p_window_id.
get_window_id()                ...    contrary to the suggestion, the function doesn't set anything, does it?

I'm happy to be redirected if a thread such as this one already exists.

Having a thread that only you know about won't help or encourage anyone else to find or report problems with the docs.  Did you know there was an email address docs@slickedit.com for reporting documentation problems.  I doubt if many people know about it and even fewer people would use it.  I've previously suggested a whole forum section for reporting doc issues but there was no interest from SE.  I think more people would report doc problems if there was a forum but I'm unsure if this would be in SlickEdit's best interests.  I frequently notice problems with the help which I don't bother to report but probably would if there was a forum.

Another thing that I believe would help is the recently suggested Wiki where people can contribute information  e.g. there are no overviews in the help for macro API topics such as tagging, xml, selective display and macro programming functions and nothing on the tree control.  A wiki might also provide a location for an organized collection of macros and patches that people write plus a section for "this is how to do whatever".

Graeme

[GregA]

Thanks Dan, for the quick response.

Thank you Graeme. I will make use of the docs@slickedit.com email address. A dedicated forum would be ideal, I agree, though perhaps overly prominent from the SlickEdit perspective. I'm a bit of a newbie to forums but am hoping that if a thread receives a constant dribble of attention, it will be maintained near to top of list. I add my voice to any request for a Wiki. For minimal investment (?) we could grow a strong resource.

[Lisa]

We welcome and appreciate any feedback sent to docs@slickedit.com. Emails to that address come to me, and I read every post on the forums as well, filing Help defects when necessary to improve the docs. I hope you all are able to check out SlickEdit 2008 when it is released as we have made major improvements to the documentation. I think the docs get better with every release but yes, there is a long way to go. I look forward to any suggestions.

Graeme: I hope we have not done anything to dissuade you from continuing to send doc bug reports. In fact, Scott and I just finished modifying the docs on Upgrading per your recent forum post/suggestion. Your feedback is very valuable to us and much appreciated!

[ScottW, VP of Dev]

Help is definitely not a low priority for us. Those who have been with us for a few releases can attest to the great progess we've made in the user guide and help system.

The items that started this thread are actually code comments. We process them to produce the API documentation. Like any large code base, comments can sometimes grow stale or be more informative to the author than the reader. So, we always appreciate any feedback you can provide.

We don't believe that a separate forum for documentation would give the topic any more attention. Problems with the documentation are problems with the product, so the product forum is the best place to discuss them. As Lisa pointed out, the email address is the best way to report a documentation issue, but we do read all forum messages and file defects as needed.

[dmw]

Since you guys are putting so much work into Slickedit's help, any chance you might update the help on the Mac?  It really isn't terribly usable in its current state.  Clicking just about any help button simply takes me to the Welcome page for the webhelp, with the index selected on the left.  "Search" isn't really a search, since it just gives an alphabetized list of terms rather than a search box.  The index isn't all that useful either, for the same reason.

I hacked on your webhelp a few versions back, and was able to get the help system fully functional in less than a day, so I don't see why you guys are shipping such a crippled version for the mac.  I appreciate all the work you guys are putting into updating your content.  It would be a big help if you could dedicate some time to the functionality.